counties. "Pretty good" was the comment at the close of the little story.
Parker, though getting out rather a creditable paper, assisted by his wife, Inez Adams Parker, had not his father-in-law's flair for journalism. He suspended the paper, apparently, because he preferred to do something else. At the time, he was helping his father-in-law in the custom-house. When he got ready to suspend, he just stopped, announcing the "Close of the Gazette" as follows:
The occasion of this so sudden stoppage is the demand upon our time and services, which are necessarily very fully occupied in other unavoidable duties. We tried much, and offered very reasonable inducements over a year since, to get someone who had time to spare to undertake the conduct of the Gazette; but, as no one else would undertake it, we did.
The paper has been as remunerative as was anticipated an<d is now nearly or quite self-sustaining. The fact is established that a small paper properly managed in Astoria pay all expenses except editorial services.
Here is a reflection on the rather slight value placed by early publishers on "editorial services." The publishers were, for the most part, printers or perhaps lawyers. Copy was largely "reprint." Preparation of local news copy ranked very low in the scale of appreciation in those days.
We part company (Parker concluded) with our little circle of readers with much reluctance, though mingled with joy for the anticipated release from the drudgery of looking over 30 exchanges and making up thence or otherwise the very limited contents of such a paper as the Gazette has been The Gazette press and office goes to Oregon City, where will be issued from it, we understand, a lively country paper. THE EDITOR.
The "lively country paper" was the Oregon City Enterprise, which was to come from the press October 27 of the same year. Seven years later DeWitt Clinton Ireland, founder of the Enterprise, was to establish in Astoria a newspaper which, like the Enterprise, has come right on down to the present.
Ireland, the founder of the Astorian, was a Vermont Yankee, born on the Fourth of July 1836 at Rutland. He learned the printing trade sticking type on a small religious and educational paper while he was attending an Episcopal school for boys at Mishawaka, Ind There he worked also on the Mishawaka Free Press, of which Schuyler Colfax, later vice-president of the United States, was editor. This paper, the first copy of which is retained by the Ireland family, is still published, now known as the Enterprise.
Before coming west (74) he worked on the Chicago Herald and
